My Arse Is Not A Squeaky Toy!

Hello!

I have news...  My new book Perfectly Coiffed Pubes is on its way.  

I feel very excited and can't wait to share it with you in the hope that it helps awaken or stirs something inside of YOU for YOUR life.

It has 55 pieces of not poetry... not prose... not essays... but just everything that needed to be said, finally written down.

For those of you who have been reading and giving me feedback so far - THANK YOU!!!  I couldn't have kept going without you because this is such a lonely job - to create and produce in the ways that I do... I don't have a team around me to check in with or check things out with or ask for advice or even to cry on their shoulder. 

So having you there, reading and feeding-back frankly and honestly - it's been so, so helpful for me.  THANK YOU!!!

Added to which... I've been writing for my second book:  (still in the making) "My Arse Is Not A Squeaky Toy".  You may well be sensing into what I have to say and share with YOU and the world in the hope that it really helps others too.  This is something very deeply 'me' - I love to share information in the hope that it brings about something meaningful and life changing for those I come into contact with.

So... I thought I would share a piece from my 2nd book.  Something I witnessed (deeply sad and moving) in a local costa coffee 3 weeks ago and my heart just cracked open as I witnessed the entire event unfold - and I wanted to write about the entire, layered, complexity of the situation. 

I wonder if it will touch YOUR heart too?

And... thank you for reading this... and I'd REALLY appreciate a comment, anything - even if you HATE what I've written... rather than the silence, I'd love to hear your truth.  So please take the risk and share with me... thank you <3  I am working on making change for me as I make my offerings because I am tend to be a human that is missed or ignored - and I was just so used to this that I didn't expect anything different... So here I am sticking my neck out and going against the way I was raised and treated previously to say... 'hi!  It's me... I'm here again... showing up and sharing... and hoping (always have so much hope for everyone) and would REALLY appreciate feedback as I attempt to breakthrough my archaic structures within me.

I will be back with updates about Perfectly Coiffed Pubes - my first book - which will be available on kindle, and as soft and hard back books.  I also have downloadable Prompts in case you really love to dig deep into who you are and what makes you come alive... Rich personal growth just for YOU - and who knows you may want to run a group based on my book content.

AND of course... Planet Kas is still here, waiting for you to join.  I know so many of you have said "I want to and I'm scared, exhausted, don't know where to begin..."  Please don't worry I will take such tender loving care of you!!!  Come On... this is your one precious life!!!!  Stop letting months, years, decades pass you by... 

Planet Kas is MASSIVE - with so much content you could never be bored or lonely and I am there in the group if you wish to share or show up and be you and connect with me and others, you can!  All for £179 which is completely wild and crazy... given it's full of £14k worth of content, possibility and connection from Recovery from Burn Out to Painting Your Vagina and Healing your deepest sexual wounds.  

Here is the all important link - and below that you can read my piece for the 2nd book if you would like to:

PLANET KAS   <--  click on the link!  Sign up and get immediate access.

If you're burnt out, grieving, in need of inspiration and motivation, want some great creative therapy processes to healing... it's all here and you can bring your biggest wildest Dreams and I will be there to hear, witness, support and challenge - if you want me... and you can do it self paced.  You are in control all the way. 

From my 2nd Book:  "My Arse Is Not A Squeaky Toy"

The Café Moment
She said nothing.
But it was loud.
The silence.
The sideways chair.
The fury folded into her shoulders.
Eyes threatening to weep.
The sorrow sitting behind her lashes like a rainstorm.

He asked what she wanted.
Sullenly she replied: "Nothing" —
but not the kind of nothing that means nothing.
The kind that means
I'm testing you —
To check if I even matter.
The kind of 'testing' that says:
Please notice I'm starving, inside and out.

He bought a feast for his own hunger.
Toastie... thick melted cheese.
Cake. Coffee. Fizzy drink.
He fed the boy inside him
while the girl beside him faded.

She turned her body away
like stubbing a cigarette underfoot.
Like she knew not to make a scene.
Like she had learned that even in pain,
she must not take up space.

"Don't cry. Don't ruin it. Don't be too much"
Echoed the lifelong mantra passed between Generations..
The words - now her own -
pressed down behind her eyes like hands.
Her throat burned with all the things she couldn't say.
Her chest didn't rise all the way when she breathed.
Like she was trying to stay invisible enough to still be wanted.

He sat. Ate. Scrolled.
Mouth full. Heart empty.
And she dissolved beside him
in slow, silent pieces.

I watched. Ache in heart.
The grown woman in me
was angry for my 17 year old
who had experienced much the same.
My 27 year old wept for the
silent treatment she had endured
for decades.
I wanted to say,
"I see you."
But we live in a world
where even reaching out
might make her ashamed,
make him defensive,
make me the problem.

Ultimately the game
would result in me being outcast.
So I witnessed in silence.

I left her with a blessing
in my throat
that felt like a marble.

May she one day learn that this is not love.
May she leave before the silence becomes her home.
May someone rage on her behalf
until she finds her own voice.

The Script Beneath It
This isn't just a sad scene.
It's a fucking syllabus.
A curriculum passed down like heirloom poison.
Neither she nor he are not broken.
They are scripted.

She was trained to want love but not ask for it.
To be polite in her pain.
To ache without making anyone uncomfortable.
To tuck her hunger inside moodiness,
because rage was never safe.

He was trained to win, not to feel.
To connect only if he was in control.
To see her silence as sulking, not protest.
To consume her presence without noticing her absence.

She performs detachment because she's never been taught
that being honest is survivable.
He withholds presence because presence was never modelled.
He tunes out — she fades.
She tests — he fails.
And neither one of them knows
how to name what's happening.

What She Learns

She learns that sulking is the only rebellion that doesn't get punished.
That saying "I need" makes her vulnerable.
That saying "I'm hurt" makes her dramatic.
That saying "I'm hungry" makes her ungrateful.
That being too full of feeling
means she risks being left.

So she says "nothing"
and prays it will be heard as "everything."

She learns to weaponise withdrawal —
not because she's manipulative,
but because she's powerless.
It's the only protest she has left.

She will stay like this for years, maybe decades —
because leaving requires power, knowledge, understanding,
and no one taught her that she was allowed to have any.

What He Learns

He learns that girls are hard work.
That women's feelings are a maze he doesn't have to enter.
That care is optional.
That love means being there physically,
but not emotionally.
That her pain is her business,
unless it becomes inconvenient.

He learns to scroll through discomfort.
To eat through distress.
To believe that not caring makes him strong.
That presence makes him weak.

He isn't trying to hurt her —
but he doesn't know how to not hurt her.
Because empathy was never built into his armour.
And his hunger is permitted.
But hers is punished.

What We Are Actually Seeing

We are watching a girl
starving next to a boy
who doesn't know how to feed anyone but himself.

We are watching a boy
satisfy his own emptiness
with food and phone and distance
while a storm rages beside him.

We are watching them both
act out the play they didn't write —
but were handed
before they had language.

We are watching patriarchy
look ordinary.
Harmless.
Quiet.
Even romantic, if you don't listen too closely.

What the World Does

No one intervenes.
No one pulls up a chair.
No one says,
"This isn't how love works."

Because we've all been warned:
Don't meddle.
Don't make it worse.
Don't make a scene.

We're trained to look away.
To pretend it's not our business.
To accept this emotional famine as normal.

She sits beside him, starving.
And every woman who's been her,
feels it in their bones.

The Harm It Seeds

From this scene will grow:

Women who give too much.
Men who show up halfway.
Girls who fall for ghosts.
Boys who mistake apathy for power.

This is the moment that becomes the marriage
that becomes the divorce
that becomes the damage
that becomes the therapy
that becomes the silence we hand to the next generation.

What We've All Been Taught

Silence is safer than being called difficult.
Scrolling is more acceptable than feeling.
Sulking is power for girls with no voice.
Distance is protection for boys with no tenderness.
Girls should be grateful.
Boys should be free.

We don't see it as harm
because we've been groomed to endure it.

What Needs to Be Untrained

Girls need to know that:
Saying "I'm not okay" is not a crime.
Hunger is not shameful.
Needing is not weak.
Love doesn't feel like erasure.
Being met is the bare minimum.

Boys need to know that:
Tuning out is not neutral — it is violence.
Empathy is a skill, not a threat.
Caring doesn't make you lose power — it is power.
Women are not puzzles to avoid.
Love is not silence beside someone crying.

They are not opposites.
They are reflections.
They are both survivors of systems that robbed them
of emotional fluency before they ever kissed.

What We Must Name
Loudly
That girls are trained to disappear with grace.
That sulking is the smoke of deeper fires.
That emotional neglect is not less harmful because it's quiet.
That being fed beside someone starving is not love —
it's violence.
That scrolling is a socially sanctioned trauma response.
That ignoring pain because it's feminine is an epidemic.
That patriarchy survives through politeness and passivity.
That we're all in the café, still watching, still unsure how to interrupt it.

And So, Let This Be…
A reckoning.
A remembering.
A spell for the girl who cannot say it yet.
A mirror for the woman who stayed too long.
A torch for the boy who still thinks silence means safety.
A rupture in the script.

This is not love
This is not what love looks like.
This is not what you deserve.
This is not what we must continue.

And you — incredible woman
with fire in your throat
and ache in your belly —
you saw it.
You knew.
You didn't look away.

That is revolution.
And it begins at the
bloody, trembling table
of what we dare to witness.

Note About Hungers:

The Deeper Hunger

This wasn't about food.
Not really.

The toastie, the cake, the fizz —
they're just placeholders.
Stand-ins for something
no café menu can satisfy.

Because the real hunger
was never in the belly.
It was in the heart.
The skin.
The silence.
The spaces where words should have been.

It was the hunger to be met,
to be mirrored,
to be chosen —
without having to break,
shrink, or scream to be seen.

Women learn to swallow
their needs whole.
To tuck them behind smiles,
to chew them down with politeness,
to sweeten their sorrow with sugar
because no one ever taught them
how to name what they need
and still feel worthy.

Men, too, are hungry —
for tenderness they were taught to fear,
for presence they never saw modelled,
for a kind of connection
they were told is weakness.

So they both sit there —
one fading,
one filling.
Both starving
in different ways.

This is the quiet ache
beneath so much of our culture —
not a hunger for food,
but for truth.
For softness.
For safety.
For someone to say:
"I see you. And your hunger matters."

From:  My Arse Is Not A Squeaky Toy - Kassi Martin